Sunday, August 3, 2008

Well we are making slow but sure progress. Today Sean, Scott, Doug and myself (Alan) got together to work on the Peugeot once again. Today's goal was to get the springs out of the car so Doug could take them home and cut a coil off of each and to finish the job of stripping the interior. As Doug, Sean and Scott are a lot better mechanics than I am I let them concentrate on taking the suspension apart while I finished the interior job.

The first thing to do was to get the front half of the console out which took a little studying before I finally located the hidden screws that were holding the console in place. Once the console was out it was an easy job to remove the carpeting and the two layers of sound deadening underneath. Once I removed the second layer I discovered that the front was every bit as wet as the back had been and it felt that I'd taken 50 lbs out of the car just by removing the carpet! Once everything was out it was even more obvious that our car had been in a serious collision at one point, both the driver's and passenger's side floorpans were buckled and the cross-brace that the driver's seat bolts to was in none too good shape either. I no longer feel bad about turning the car into a LeMons racer, frankly it should have by all rights been hauled off to the wrecking yard years ago.

Meanwhile the rest of the team got the front suspension out fairly easily but the rear turned out to be more of a problem. Just getting the rear shocks out required a lot of wrenching in a tight area and applications of heat from a butane torch (right next to the gas tank!). However once the shocks were out it became obvious that there was no easy way to pop the axles out so we could remove the springs. A quick check of the PDFs on our Peugeot service manual CD confirmed the worst, that we had to remove the hubs to get the axles out, unfortunately the hubs were on so tight that they broke Sean's 1/2 inch Craftsman breaker bar! Thankfully Sean has an impact wrench but the air pressure from his small-sized air compressor just isn't enough so the rear springs will just have to wait until Sean can take home his bigger work air compressor which should hopefully do the trick.

Anyway it was a good but slightly frustrating day but with luck we'll get it all taken care of soon. Thankfully we have almost 5 months left to go but there's no need to tempt fate and wait to the last minute!